Chiaroscuro
by Rachelea
Summary: In the aftermath of Magnussen's death, a few things need realigning in the mind palace of Sherlock Holmes. Deals with the aftermath of His Last Vow and the undetermined resurrection of one James Moriarty. Angst like whoa, as they say.
1. My Old Friend

Certain people feel at home only in the dark.

I have watched them, over the winding path of my career. Usually in the course of pursuing them. It transpires that darkness has a reputation which is not entirely unearned. I have learned their ways, followed, unearthed, and shed light on what drives them to creep beneath the awning of 'ordinary' society.

(That that light casts certain reflections is hardly my concern.)

Often, I have admired them.

But never until now have I completely understood them.

* * *

><p>John is something different, you see.<p>

John I understand, more or less, and I admit that it took many years' study, watching him pushed to his limits time and again. Watching him break. There are less extreme ways to learn what someone is made of, but that is the only method I have ever found absolute. Despite his many contradictions, John is, perhaps, the only human being whom I can claim with any degree of certainty to understand. _(Nature? No. Human? No.)_

I was different too. We were alike in that way, he and I, living for the adrenaline, the chase—

And there our paths diverged. John Watson, soldier and healer. Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective.

(I insist upon this designation, whatever Mycroft may say. Any dragonslaying is incidental, merely a part-time occupation, and I am no knight.)

Mycroft is himself an expert in the art of deception, however pure he believes his own intentions to be. I know better and don't care, just as he resents my work and finds uses for it. My brother scrapes earth across the picked-over bones of misbegotten scheming, planting as adornments such gratuitous titles as _classified _and _need to know basis. _By contrast I am the grave-digger, the burglar; unearthing fact and watching fallacy writhe and twist away like maggots beneath the sun's rays.

Magnussen did the same. That is one truth I have learned, staring into the darkness.

* * *

><p>In the dark I watch him fall, again and again, objectively, from different angles. They never let me see the autopsy shots. I am left with only memory, and that serves me as it has always done: perfectly. I know the angle he fell. I know where the bullet entered his brain. I am no John Watson, but enough of a crack shot at point-blank range to know where it would pierce before it left the gun. Enough of a biologist to envision the bullet penetrating several degrees below the right eye, lodging in the hippocampus, where a few inadequate layers of fleshy tissue guard the neuron pathways responsible for transferring memories from the short- to the long-term. I aimed for and hit his mind-palace, watched it crumble and collapse, like his gaunt body, into the abyss of those endless vaults. In the darkness I can almost laugh at the sight.<p>

But even in the dark, there is little point in wondering whether he will be a short- or a long-term memory.

* * *

><p>Mary has a thousand of them buried in the layers of her consciousness. I wonder if any of them deserved it.<p>

* * *

><p>The voice sounds again, stirring a miscellany of feelings—first a familiar aversion, the briefest steel-edge of cold fear, and then something softer and less recognizable. The voice has been there all this time, alternating with others, droning in a by-now familiar rhythm. I take as little notice as I do of the wall. That too has changed—at first plain, textured and hueless, then a pale cream, and now a resolute blue-grey—Baker Street, I realize. The bedroom—my bedroom, though it never felt like mine, in the way of <em>my<em> flat, _my _best friend, not _my_ housekeeper. Merely a chamber designated for sleep. Pointless.

But I am here now, and I wonder how many nights I have spent in darkness, staring at the wall.

The mattress, uncomfortably soft and yielding, sinks beneath my weight as I shift; this has always been irrelevant before.

"Sherlock."

That voice, that pattern of sounds breaking through the clouds again, however tightly I condense them. And this time another voice answers, reluctant and creaky with disuse. It takes me a moment to recognize it as my own.

"Mycroft."

* * *

><p><em>"Sherlock?"<em>

_"Back with us. For now."_

_John felt his eyes slip shut and his breath rush outwards, knees buckling in relief that his friend was back, that all would be—_

_Not well. All would be far from well._

_But better._

_Mycroft didn't look at all well either, John realized all at once, with a sudden pang of…was it pity? At any rate an emotion he had never thought to associate with the tall, infuriatingly self-assured man; the British Government with its impersonal secrets and casually wielded power, with his tailored suits and even more carefully crafted expressions of nothing. If not nothing, then detached displeasure or amusement, since Sherlock and his brother always veiled their sniping in taut humor to conceal either the bitterness running through their relationship or its lack. Every word and gesture was a move in a carefully orchestrated game, and it went on until one of them, generally Sherlock, stopped wanting to play. _

_The weeks since his brother's imprisonment had not been kind to Mycroft. The days since Sherlock's failed exile still worse. Dark circles and defeat, lines that should never have touched that unassailable countenance._

_John did the unthinkable, and placed a hand on his shoulder. _

_"It's all right now, Mycroft. Or…it will be. Why don't you go and have a kip. I'll sit with him—"_

_But Mycroft shook off the hand and the offer just as he shook of the exhaustion that had, for the briefest moment, overwhelmed him enough to rest visibly in the slump of his shoulders. Weariness he could neither afford nor indulge right now, that would keep until this whole affair was over. Until James Moriarty was buried deep a second time, if need be._

_"Go to him, John. I will be monitoring, and I will be right back, I…"_

_I need a moment._

* * *

><p>"John. How long?"<p>

My voice is sharper in the dim light; the words are voluntary this time, and emerge only with effort. Mycroft is not here now, if a brother with a CCTV network and a thousand hidden tricks can ever be said to be 'not here', and I need to know now, before he comes back; need to prepare a dishonest reaction before he returns to pull away the curtains. I no longer relish the sunlight.

And yet John is the sun, in an odd way, everything from his candid face to his skin tone to his soldier's fluency in profanity proclaims it; he always has been. In a lifetime spent shedding light beneath the paving stones of London, I have been delusional if I believed it to be my own. John and others like him are the sun's rays, the reason the grass stretches upwards a painful sharp green, and I am the muted wash of greys edging into black.

On edge is what I have always done best.

"Sherlock," and there is no mistaking the relief and strain and—yes, I recognize it now—love, as he says it. I shut my eyes against the flash of undeserved radiance, and focus on calculating, from his tone, the answer to my question. Cracking, not broken. I have seen John Watson break. Days then, not weeks. Good.

There's a problem with the edge. Sometimes you fall.

I wait for darkness to reassert itself before repeating the question in a voice that I can only hope is stronger than before.

"How long, John?"

This time his voice is nearer and I know he must have settled at my side, though the creak of the chair escaped my ears. There is a rustle as he reaches out his hand, and draws it back.

"Almost six days." He clears his throat. "Six days since your…return."

Six days. No wonder. I gave myself only two; long enough to leave the British government and its agents far behind. I was not supposed to be here when the memories swarmed back.

Four days unaccounted for, then. Four days is a long time. Half a week. Long enough to solve a murder, or move into a flat. To collapse from lack of 'proper nutrition' (idiot), to destroy and remake a friendship, to track down a hound from hell, to learn a detective inspector's name.

Long enough to keep from giving in.

Long enough to gain a fan, lose a killer, and find a living smile where you once met only an empty grin. Long enough to give in (idiot), and then let the poison seep out with so much more pain than it entered.

Long enough for a brother to learn Serbian and for four stone walls and a rusted pipe to creep into your nightmares.

_(Remember sleep?)_

Long enough, in short, for scars to form and seal away the pain, and for it all to come rushing back.

* * *

><p>The rush of future meeting past was too much. No, not too much, too much all at <em>once, <em>necessitating re-cataloguing. John must not know. I shut my eyes again and slip into the reassuring blackness. John will not know.

I am deluding myself if I think he doesn't know already.

* * *

><p>Mycroft is a stone wall, and like the shadows I have come to appreciate, steadying in his coldness.<p>

(If he were not, if he were to turn, become

_Merry Christmas_

and

_Your loss would break me_)

But Mycroft knows better.

* * *

><p>"Little brother. How are you feeling?"<p>

I don't restrain a muffled groan into the pillows.

"Haven't you disowned me yet, Mycroft? Do get a move on, it would save us both these conversations."

Above my head his mouth curves into a frown, or worse, a smile.

"Tempting, I grant you. But you are avoiding the question."

"I am, aren't I?"

He apparently has nothing to say to that, and after long minutes of silence, leaves.

* * *

><p>Two days and countless cups of tea later<p>

(I can't quite recall when my life became a fathomless sea of hot water and tannin—

I think it had to do with jumpers, and Chinese, and _just filling in for your skull_—)

Mycroft returns.

In celebration of the occasion, John wavers between the living room and his still-furnished bedroom upstairs. Curiosity wins out in the end, and his old wariness around my brother, though half-vanished these days, rides in the tension of his shoulders in full force. For my benefit, I understand, when he drops into his old plaid armchair and leaves Mycroft to perch uncomfortably on the sofa. My fingers twitch beneath the blanket (a knitted monstrosity of Mrs. Hudson's), wishing to pluck at the strings of my Stradivarius, but the instrument is slumped in a corner of the no-longer-neglected bedroom with blue-grey walls, and Mycroft sent before him too little warning even for me.

Mycroft shifts his umbrella to his left hand and his gaze to my face, and all of a sudden I hate him for appearing at a time when a fraction of John's endless rain of hot tea has made it into a mug in my hand, and the bathroom mirror still reveals dark circles in skin that is definitely tipping off the poetic end of 'alabaster' into the realm of 'translucent'. He, of all people, should know the importance of façade.

(No, inaccuracy of wording: I am perfectly steady, although I may not look it.)

My brother slips two fingers into the breast pocket of his tailored suitcoat and removes a slip of folded paper. Without effort, I recognize it as the single remaining copy of the official orders for my aborted mission _(read, memorize, destroy without delay)_. Whatever Mycroft says, I am doubtful that I will ever really match his penchant for melodrama. He is watching me closely now, cataloguing my reaction—which, I am not displeased to report, is nonexistent.

"Sherlock," he says after a pause, and I fight down an invisible upsurge of irritation, because when did my name become the target and wellspring of every absurdly pointless emotion I _despise_, "you know our time is not unlimited. We need to talk about what happened."

The room is too bright, and I wish John would turn the lamps down, but I know better to ask this in front of the overperceptive eye of my lying, _caring is not an advantage_ brother. So I settle for turning my head and snarling with enough restraint that it might, possibly, under entirely different circumstances, actually be true, "Nothing _happened_."

It's typical of our relationship—if you can call it that; the words humans come up with to euphemize hostility—that Mycroft will to send me to near-certain death without bothering with this conversation, but the moment I set foot within fifty kilometers of his usual revolution (home to office to Diogenes club) I'm once again his little brother. Not this, Sherlock. Not that. Mummy will be upset, Sherlock. It's apparent that neither adulthood nor anything else is sufficient to relieve his self-imposed burden of responsibility. Heaven knows how many times I've offered. And in what variety of ways.

But no. Never happy unless stalking one's newly acquired flatmate via public phone, and offering thinly veiled bribes (threats) for information on yours truly. Or forcing equally absurd, if more straightforward, conversations on a convalescent little brother.

For just a moment I wish Jim Moriarty had stayed dead.

Fortunately, I have had ample time to plan for this moment. Unfortunately, so has the pompous prat I call brother. Even less providential, Mycroft only appreciates subtlety up to a certain point. Both he and John can be irritatingly candid at the most inopportune times.

Speaking of.

"I would beg to differ, little brother, you were practically catatonic for four days."

"I was rather crushed at being forced back into lecture range. Tried to block you out. Unfortunately, it could only last so long."

"Don't joke about this," John says sharply, and again I catch a glimpse of the strain he's been suppressing, badly, (slant of shoulders, left-hand tremor, conversations with Mary few and hurried) throughout the past week. I suppose that a less robotic friend would feel pity, but I'm far too irked at the fact that he and Mycroft have obviously planned this. Should have seen it coming. _Did_ see it coming, just not the precise timing. I was thinking about something. What was it? Oh, yes, the resurrection of my mortal foe.

Possibly less mortal than previously thought.

John is saying something. I pull a fraction of my focus back to the conversation at hand. If it was just Mycroft, I wouldn't bother. [There's an idea in that: Text Mary, keeping hand immobile beneath blanket—_she'd_ be on my side, owes me that much, just a lie to tell John her contractions have started, and then all that's left is to ignore Mycroft in blissful silence—Mycroft. Can't text Mary, Mycroft would notice the screen's glow—]

Previous experience suggests that variations on this plan, however tempting, will only delay the inevitable.

"…know you hate this, Sherlock, but we were really worried about you…"

Yes, your concern as of late has been flattering. I don't need to say this out loud for Mycroft to hear it. If there is any comfort to this, it is that Mycroft despises these conversations nearly as badly as I do. And we were so close, brother, to never having them again.

"Mes excuses les plus sincères." It irritates Mycroft when I speak French, because my accent is superior. For a brief moment I entertain fantasies of Mycroft believing I engineered this entire scenario to annoy him. The opposite is unfortunately true.

John, bless his monolinguistic heart, is less than enthusiastic about being left out.

"What?"

"I said, I'm sorry and I'll never do it again."

I wait for that stricken look to cross his face, but he flings a pillow at my head instead. Sometimes John Watson still surprises me. Then again, John's skill at detecting sincerity, or the lack thereof, has greatly improved since we became flatmates. Mycroft says the universe isn't lazy enough for coincidences, but then, Mycroft is a fat git.

"Would you two _kindly…_"

"Have you another preference, Mycroft? Ste došli ovde da pričamo , zar ne?"

My brother's face becomes, if possible, stonier still. John occasionally voices the opinion (or his face voices it for him, which, now I think about it, is all kinds of ironic) that social encounters are my Achille's heel as a detective. He may well be right. But have you ever considered, John Watson, my sole childhood companion? I can walk the fine line between disappointment and indifference very well. Why learn to read anything else, when Mycroft has only variations on these?

Presently he is leaning heavily toward the former. Feigned indifference is translucent as a watercolor wash, to me. John's face, on the other hand, is the palette of an overenthusiastic painter. Tobacco ash has always held my interest much more than acrylics, but Mummy has a great-great-uncle. Art in the blood, they say.

"Sherlock," John tries again, strained, through that unlikely mixture of patience and murderous exasperation. (The lines in his face are a curious marriage of military predictability and the doctor's untidy scrawl). "There are things I need to know. You two can sit and play your silent games, and snipe at each other in Hungarian and pretend not to care, but I do, do you understand!" His voice rises. A tidal wave at sea.

Serbian, actually. I avoid his eyes, although I know there is no danger of saltwater spillover so long as the surf pounds immutably against the knife-pocked mantle and peeling wallpaper.

"What do you want to know?"

"All of it!" he hisses—actually hisses. I know. "What you were…what's going _on_ in that brain of yours, Sherlock—why you speak and move and function like your usual self, a bloody well-oiled—" he flinches back from the word _machine_. Go ahead and say it, John. It might shock my circuits into something like a pulse. Reset the operating system.

"—and then…you just stopped. You stopped, Sherlock, and there was nothing I could do." He rubs a hand over his eyes. John is exhausted. Try lying in the dark for four days, John. It helps. "_He_ was scared too, you know. He just won't admit it."

Mycroft? Mycroft, frightened? No. No, the ghost of his fright lives only in my head. Never fully glimpsed. Always blurry, distant through a haze of narcotics or helicopter glass.

My brother's disbelieving face mirrors my own. John looks from one to the other and lets out an uncouth sound halfway between a sob and a snort.

Time for a thrust from the side, I think. John has accomplished at least a piece of his plot—captured my attention in full—and so in return I wrap my question in half a lie.

"Mind palace, John." It's a solid defense, logical and well supported by precedent. "As a matter of necessity in determining if Moriarty really is back…"

"Sod Moriarty!"

A blink. "Excuse me?"

And Mycroft, Mycroft who should be on my side for once, listening, believing, examining the situation _logically_, Mycroft who plucked me from the sky and my temporary liberty, and brought me back, at Jim's implicit request, to be shut up like a bird in the old cage of suspicion and concern and _one day we'll be standing around a body, and Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there…_

_Shut up_, I hiss, and Sally's voice fades into empty air.

Mycroft is looking at me in that way, and something hardens inside me because beneath the indifference and disappointment I can see that he knows. Moriarty is not the one I spent four days struggling with in the darkness. Except for one moment of blind panic and near-eclipse, Moriarty was never the one I hated.

"It's all right to be human, Sherlock," John's voice continues, disconnected from John, because John does not say these things, John makes tea and buries his head in a newspaper. Or stalks the streets of London, foraging for the balm that will calm him down. (Normalcy or insanity, whichever comes first.)

"What you…what happened, it's enough to make anyone hurt. That's not _weakness_, it just means you're more…more than you want to be."

John's voice drones on, but he is only saying two things. Both I know already. One of them is true.

To murder is terribly human, John's voice is saying.

To _feel_ for it is okay, John's voice is saying.

No, John's voice, you're wrong. For all your humanity and your social ease and your everything-Sherlock-Holmes-is-not, you're wrong. What good does it to _feel? _ Who _deserves _to feel for murder? Like a child begging forgiveness after stealing gingerbread, crumbs still edging the corners of its mouth. Humanity developed guilt as a last-ditch effort at redemption. But guess what? Life will only flutter back into one of them. And not the one I removed it from. I am, in many ways, more thorough than my nemesis.

No, John, I would do it again in a moment. I don't deserve the sweetness of hurt. What I deserve is the curse of six months, and that was taken from me. I have more utility here. What they need is a machine, not a stained knight. The world has had enough humanity out of Sherlock Holmes. So, back to work.

Soon. As soon as the cataloguing is complete.

"John," I finally snap, if only to stop his droning voice and its lies. "You know my methods. I am perfectly all right. As if that should be of the _slightest _concern to anyone besides myself. The problem now is _Moriarty_. Does that penetrate the fog of your small brain?"

No, of course not. Sometimes the sunlight hits John's face at just the right angle, and it is so easy to read. I admire the pattern of hurt I splashed upon it. No, of course not Moriarty. He's

"…concerned with another murderer right now?"

The words escape unbidden.

"Concerned with a friend," John replies, and the bruise staining his face reaches upward and into his eyes. This should have the effect of dimming the light but does not. The small, trailing ache in my head intensifies.

"You're both correct, to an extent," Mycroft speaks up. "Moriarty, and not Magnussen, is the current concern. Which is precisely the reason you need to get past this, Sherlock, and if that means talking to someone…"

And somehow I am on my feet, the mug of John's tea splashed like blood across the carpet fibers, Mrs. Hudson's scratchy blanket collapsed around my feet like a dying animal.

"I think it should be abundantly clear," I hiss, "that _this _isn't helping!"

John's face crumples in shock, Mycroft's in triumph, and I hate him more than ever.

"So talk to us, and I won't insist upon it," he says. A small brotherly reminder, as though one was needed, of the power he now has over me. I handed it to him myself by removing a piece from his chessboard. Not black or white. Grey. One manipulation deserves another.

"Talk about what? The past? You're right, of course, much less dreary than the future. We know the future. Moriarty is the future. After him, what then? The past is much more interesting. Let's talk about Magnussen. Let's talk about Sherlock Holmes, and how everyone knew he would finally snap one day. Let's talk about how they were all right. Then, because privacy is a thing of the past too, let's talk about his freakish brain and how it needs four days to realign things!"

John's face is a picture now. Of what I don't know. "Sherlock, you aren't…"

"No, let me finish," I hiss at him. "This is what you want, isn't it? Then let's continue, let's talk about Magnussen. Do you have a picture in your head, John, of how he fell? The way he crumpled—where the bullet entered, and where it left, how that meticulously compiled archive fell to ashes? My hands aren't stained with blood, John, they're stained grey—grey ashes, grey suit, dead grey eyes. It wasn't murder, it was arson. The whole thing, collapsed, do you have an image in your head of that? I have a thousand. Did you hear the bullet leave the gun? I felt it enter. It's _too much information,_ John. It's Serbia and it's Baskerville and it's every charred corpse we ever found in an alley and the poisoned breath of everyone Moriarty ever got his hands on, and I'd make the same decision in a heartbeat. Does that sound _okay_ to you, John? Does that sound _human?_"

The strange thing about words is that they are better, sometimes, than silence. While they last. Afterward the silence echoes a thousand times louder. And if I disappear, retreat to the disused, despised bedroom, the only place left to go, and slam the door, that echoes too.

Somewhere between the echoes I slip into unconsciousness. When I wake, in the deep grey hours of early morning, it is to stare at four words etched on a glowing screen. An unsigned text message.

_More than you know._


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Surprise! This isn't a one-shot. Warnings for extended Shakespeare metaphors, angst and an actual plotline. I know; I'm surprised too. There's more written but I reluctantly decided it had to be saved for the next chapter, so feel free to follow.**

**Also, review. It would make my day.**

* * *

><p>Mycroft does not return, but sends an impersonal, black-suited pawn in his stead. John does return, late the next morning. He evades the pawn outside the door, not before a brief argument and the ping of a text alert. Big Brother still watching, then. Upon gaining entry John begins the conversation with a game of Let's Pretend. It has been so long since Captain Redbeard that I go along, if only for the novelty.<p>

Or perhaps this is his way of catching desperately at the straws of the past. More interesting, John. I did tell you.

"What are you up to now, then?"

"I'm—"

"Let me guess. Bored."

"Correct in essence."

"So what's lying here on the sofa supposed to accomplish?"

"I could form a similar query regarding getting up."

"Sunshine? Fresh air? Maybe, I don't know, get something done?"

A languid gesture. "As you can see, John, I am in fact…"

"Half-dressed?"

"Accomplishment. There you go."

"Get off the sofa and have dinner with Mary and I tonight."

I pretend to consider. "No."

"There's an Italian place around the corner from our house. Prawns. Garlic. Homemade alfredo."

"Mm. Better than Angelo's?"

John wavers at this disloyalty, and then remembers the game. "Yes," he says firmly.

"Fresh basil, too. Drop by later."

His eyebrows draw together, the John equivalent of a double take. "Really?"

"Mmm."

John recognizes dismissal when he hears it. I am glad of it. My head still aches, and the room is darker when he's gone.

Mycroft's pawn shifts his weight and stifles a yawn, stepping back in front of the door. The lock slides into place as John's tread retreats down the stairs. Even now, I am not entirely incapable of gratitude. Mycroft's Christmas gift to me was a weighty one. The scant seconds of reflection afforded me prior to Magnussen's death have evolved into an overabundance in the weeks since, and it would take a great degree of oblivion not to realize that house arrest is far better than I could have hoped for.

House arrest and the interaction of friends. He knows me too well. Knows the itching restless fits alternating with lethargy. Despite his affected scorn for my 'goldfish', he knows precisely what keeps my mind from consuming itself.

And this is good fortune on more than one level, because Mycroft knows about her.

He told me.

* * *

><p><em>"I suppose the handcuffs are entirely necessary."<em>

_"To the armed guard waiting outside the door, yes."_

_A battered key skidded to a halt in front of Sherlock. The detective glanced up with a raised eyebrow. _

_"But not to you?"_

_Mycroft watched the long fingers slide the key into the lock with practiced ease. This wasn't the first time the authorities had had cause to question his little brother's loyalty._

_"No."_

_"I'm almost touched."_

_"What a time for you to turn human at last. What made you do it?"_

_Obviously Mycroft wasn't referring to this outburst of brotherly affection. Sherlock sighed and ran freed hands through his dark curls. _

_"What do you expect, Mycroft? 'I'm sorry and I'll never do it again'? You know better than that. In any case," he added as a careless afterthought, "I'm certain some of your colleagues will be glad to get out from under his thumb." _

_Mycroft slammed his hands on the table in front of Sherlock. For the thousandth time he wondered if his little brother really was the sociopath he claimed to be. Life had always been a game to him, an endless cycle of frantic activity, its only purpose the ultimate evasion of boredom. And, so, apparently, was death._

_"Don't lie to me, Sherlock! The _greater good_ has never been your motivation."_

_Sherlock turned his head and fixed a lazy gaze on his elder brother. _

_"Maybe I've changed."_

_The logic was almost twisted enough to be true. Sherlock Holmes tracked down killers for the same reason that other people bungee jumped off cliffs or leapt from airplanes. Of course when he got around to committing murder, there would be an altruistic motive. _

_"Can you not so much as feign regret, Sherlock? Are you really—" he broke off._

_Sherlock watched calmly. "Why, brother. Is this sentiment?"_

_When Mycroft didn't answer, Sherlock went on. This time real rage threatened to choke his words._

_"Let me tell you something, brother, that you don't seem to have grasped," he hissed. "Magnussen was the most twisted criminal in all of England, for all he rarely broke the law. He was the embodiment of all that I have ever hated, and not because I am a sociopath," pronouncing the word with a distaste that left Mycroft stunned. "Not even because he threatened, kidnapped and very nearly killed the only man who has ever called himself my friend. No, it is because Magnussen, himself, was the quintessence of everything wrong with our race, with those who call themselves human, and make an occupation of slamming doors in the faces of anyone different._

_"Despite what some think, I take no pleasure in the presence of death for its own sake. Nor do I enjoy killing, as I now know firsthand." _

_In the sudden silence, Mycroft could have sworn he heard Sherlock's breath catch slightly. _

_"But I rid us of him, and that I do not regret."_

_With something like a sigh, Mycroft settled into the chair across the table. The room was dark, apart from a light shining almost directly overhead, failing to penetrate the shadows only where the paneled walls met. The table at which they sat was square and carved from the same dark, polished wood. Despite the lavish surroundings, the scene was cliché enough that Sherlock barely bit back the wry comment that would have escaped him under any other circumstances. Today, for once, he'd put his brother through enough. _

_"Three hours, Sherlock…" Mycroft dragged a hand across his brow in a gesture of uncharacteristic weariness, stilling his features with an effort. "Three hours ago we were smoking in the garden. Since then you've killed a man in cold blood. _This_ man, in particular. In front of nearly two dozen witnesses. You know I can't sweep this under the rug."_

_Sherlock sighed and leaned back, folding his hands. "I don't expect you to try."_

_"Then tell me why you did it." Mycroft's words were granite. _

_Sherlock met his eyes evenly. "I've told you why."_

_Mycroft leaned forward and dropped his voice, though he'd had the soundproof walls swept for bugs before the helicopter had even left the manor._

_"I know about Mary." _

_The words dropped softly into the space between them. Beneath the light's blinding glare, his brother's expression didn't change. Only Mycroft Holmes could have read fear in the slight dilation of his pupils._

_Sherlock recovered almost instantly. "I suspected as much. So tell me, brother mine, why is a CIA-trained, freelance killer more useful to you alive than dead?"_

_Mycroft tapped his fingers on the tabletop. "Call it a wedding present."_

_Sherlock snorted._

_"To be more accurate, I spend less on nanny fees this way."_

_"Mary doesn't spy on me," said Sherlock dismissively. "I would be able to tell."_

_"I didn't hire her to spy on you, Sherlock!" Mycroft gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles whitening. "As it happens, that woman was the _only_ thing keeping John Watson alive for the past two years. And since I don't compensate _him_ nearly enough for his babysitting services, I was willing to keep Miss 'Morstan's' little secret so long as she kept to the straight and narrow."_

_"So you absolved a former assassin in order to protect your little brother? That really is sweet, My. I never knew you cared."_

_Mycroft clenched his jaw. "Backfired a bit when you turned up with a bullet through your chest. Her freedom very nearly ended then."_

_Sherlock waved this away. "We met under…awkward circumstances. It was for the best, really."_

_"I'm aware." Mycroft leaned forward. "Thanks to your efforts, Mary Morstan's hands are free of Magnussen's blood. I do hope you're pleased with the trade-off." _

_"Better this way."_

_There was silence in the room. Then Sherlock spoke again._

_ "You really think…"_

_"What?"_

_"You think I couldn't function without John Watson."_

_Mycroft exhaled._

_"Yes, Sherlock, I think he keeps you off narcotics and more or less in one piece. As such, I considered it unwise to allow him to succumb to grief in your absence. I'm sure you've realized by now the emotional turmoil your little charade caused."_

_"I'm not a child, Mycroft."_

_"He went away for a month and we found you in a drug den."_

_"Working on a case!"_

_"So you say. It may help _your_ case, anyway."_

_"As the lab results will clearly show, I am _clean_. I wasn't high when I shot Charles Augustus Magnessen, much as you may wish to believe otherwise. I put a bullet through his head—yes, Mycroft, in cold blood, along with every other overused prosaism you care to employ—very simply because he was the most malicious viper ever to crawl the face of the earth."_

_"And?"_

_"And he threatened my best friend."_

_Sherlock's voice dropped an octave, and Mycroft felt again that thrill of horror, the fear of and for the man sitting before him, amounting to a plummeting sensation in the pit of his stomach. Much as he hated to admit it, he had felt himself falling, for a moment, earlier that night…falling despite firm steel beneath his feet and the whirring helicopter blade above._

_Sherlock; of all people the one who should understand. Sherlock, the last man who would ever understand._

_ "Not much of a defense. After all the trouble I go through to keep you alive." A hand came up to meet the receding hairline as Mycroft's despair at last seeped into his voice, crumpling his masklike features. "You do realize, Sherlock, that there is nothing I can do."_

_"There is nothing I expect. As for defense, there can be none—I wasn't high, and nor was I raving, much as you may like to think it."_

_"That may not be your call to make anymore."_

_For the first time Sherlock recoiled. "Is that a threat?"_

_"A threat?" Mycroft laughed hollowly. "No, little brother, we are beyond threats. This is reality. There is not a prison in England you haven't helped to fill. Our hands are tied, yours as well as mine." _

_ In spite of himself his brother's fingers curled, digging into his own arm. "The options?"_

_"Your choices are to plead mental instability—which, to be frank, few would doubt—and submit to the restrictions that come with it, or to accept the job offer we discussed."_

_Sherlock's eyes lingered on the grain running through the smooth tabletop. When he raised them again Mycroft felt it like a blow to the gut. There was no question that some light had been snuffed out, something fragile collapsed._

_"Well then, there's hardly any question, is there?"_

_Mycroft made his voice hard. "Death was temporary once. I suspect it won't be so again."_

_"No." Sherlock stretched and yawned, catlike, rotating his wrists to shake off the lingering stiffness of the restraints. "I suspect not."_

_He fell silent for a moment._

_"So troublesome, these goldfish."_

_"That's the part I don't understand. I know you miss John. Why would you care about Mary? Why give everything up for the woman who shot you?"_

_Sherlock's voice was flat. "Because whatever hurt I have caused John in the past, I wish to repay in full. Because whatever else happens, John Watson deserves real happiness. My life consists of dodging death threats that one day, despite your best efforts, will catch up with me. Mary will always be there for John."_

_"And what about me? What of our parents? John Watson is not the only person to whom you owe affection."_

_Both brothers fell silent, Mycroft wondering if familial affection was a concept that had ever entered Sherlock's mind. He opened his mouth again, but Sherlock cut him off._

_"Then, my dear brother," his voice carried the slightest suggestion of huskiness. "I offer you my most sincere apologies."_

_Mycroft closed his eyes. In the silent room the gunshot echoed a thousand times over._

* * *

><p><em>"What else?"<em>

_"What?"_

_"There's something else."_

_"There is nothing else, Mycroft."_

_"You're hurting him now. He's losing you again, and little brother, this time it will probably be forever. So." Mycroft stood again, leaned forward on his palms. "What else?"_

_His brother finally met his eyes. "I made a promise."_

_"You promised to murder a villainous psychopath?"_

_Sherlock Holmes grinned mirthlessly and held out his wrists for the cuffs. _

_"You should have been at the wedding."_

* * *

><p>On certain occasions it is only possible to distinguish trips to my mind palace by the aftermath. The little fiasco last week was an extreme example, but there are other, subtler clues. Mycroft appearing at my side unnoticed (the day following a subdued evening of takeout with John and Mary) is one of them. Whatever his other competencies, my brother has all the stealth of an African bull elephant, a comparison that I consider voicing aloud if only to wipe away the look on his face. To judge by the depths of smugness in his expression, he has been standing there, unnoticed, for several minutes at least. But by the time I realize this it is far too late to pretend otherwise.<p>

"You know, brother," Mycroft remarks, taking a seat uninvited, "Sometimes I do wonder how you survived a two-year stealth mission."

I snort. Keep wondering, brother mine. But for once there are more pressing concerns than repartee.

"Mycroft. Why are you here?" The latest file on Moriarty arrived only this morning; hence the most recent bout of pondering. Unlikely there's been additional news since. If that were the case, it would be urgent; my brother's obvious lack of haste rules that out.

"No news on your old friend," says Mycroft with a lazy wave of his hand. "If there were, he'd probably have taken over the country while I stood waiting for you to acknowledge my presence. No, this is a social visit, little brother."

There's no point even bothering to restrain a groan at that. Mycroft settles back in John's chair and regards me over steepled fingers. I can hardly be so blind as not to recognize the conscious parody.

Oh no, brother mine. You don't want to go there.

But a battle of mannerisms sounds tedious at best, at this point in the morning, so I settle for the second-best method of annoying my brother. Guaranteed.

"Come on, Myc, I've been doing my homework and everything." The file slips off my chest onto the floor as I push myself into a sitting position. Mycroft spares it a glance.

"Anything?"

"No. You?"

"Nothing like before. Unless the network is more nebulous than ever."

"He doesn't _have_ a network anymore." I drum my fingers impatiently on the table. "I must have toppled half the drug rings in Europe, to say nothing of the more organized crime—it's not just Moriarty, they're all working with splinters now."

"Let's hope you're right." Mycroft is expressionless. And then, because half a minute's meaningful and semicourteous discourse is apparently too much for him, he leans forward. "And how are you really, Sherlock?"

Briefly I wonder what it would be like to be someone for whom déjà vu is an occasional occurrence, rather than a state of being. Relaxing, probably. "I'm _fine._" Then, allowing a tinge of irony to creep into my tone, "And you?"

Mycroft ignores this last, studying me again. "You do seem better."

"Seems? Nay, I know not seems."

Impossible to resist a jibe from the one play that, irritatingly, has stuck in my head since Harrow. _Les Misérables _aside, Mycroft respects the classics.

His mouth actually twitches. "Are you going to finish?"

Never let it be said that I can't oblige. When the mood strikes.

"'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good _brother_, nor customary suits of solemn black, nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath, no, nor the fruitful river in the eye, nor the dejected 'haviour of the visage, together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, that can denote me truly. These, indeed, _seem_…for they are actions that a man might play."

"I remember that performance," Mycroft reminisces drily, by way of applause. "You've always had something of a flair for drama. Though I did imagine you had, ah, _deleted_ that."

"We're not all obliged to hide backstage." With a meaningful glance at his middle. Then, just for the sake of conclusion, "'But I have that within which passeth show; these but the trappings and the suits of woe.'"

"Indeed."

"Indeed, that's what you're expecting to hear, isn't it?" I suppress a yawn.

"And your resemblance to the young Prince grows by the day. I always was a bit concerned you identified so deeply with the character."

I scowl. Leave it to Mycroft.

"Having sympathy for Polonius, are we?"

He says nothing.

"Let's clear up this extended metaphor once and for all," I say to the ceiling. "Hamlet got it wrong in two ways. First, I think we can both agree that preemptive is more effective than a revenge strike. Next, he didn't check behind the curtain."

"Was Magnussen a Claudius, then?"

"You tell me." I fix Mycroft with a stare. "He was all set to dethrone a king."

After a long moment, Mycroft clears his throat and looks away. "How does our good Horatio?"

I glance toward the stairs. "John is fine. And Mary."

He nods.

"I don't need a nursemaid, you know."

"No?" He raises an eyebrow.

_"No._ What I need is a lead on our friend Fortinbras. Which I would certainly have by now, if you allowed me to leave the flat."

"Would you?" asks Mycroft slowly.

"I know Moriarty better than your people do. Better than anyone, in fact."

"You don't always have to play the lead. Learn to direct, brother mine. It may prevent inconveniences like this in the future."

The _future. _"Oh yes. I'll brush up on my Ukrainian at the same time."

His voice drops unexpectedly, hardening. "Can you really be too _blind_ to realize the opportunity this presents?"

I push myself up straight, incensed. _"Opportunity?"_

His voice is ice. "How many killers have such a chance to win a pardon?"

"How many friends have you seen strapped in Semtex and held at gunpoint?" I snap back, all too aware of how the tables have turned. I used to admire fire, the unsteady, revealing flicker, the way it alters molecular composition and makes such _interesting _shapes in the darkness …but in the pause, my mind is overtaken in choking memories of the night I learned it is no substitute for sunlight. It takes a long moment—longer than usual, under my brother's watchful eye—and several rapid breaths to fight off the invasion, free my lungs of the drifting tastes of chlorine and gunpowder, and continue.

"We're not dealing with an _opportunity, _Mycroft, we're dealing with a madman. The game has cost too much. This time I _will_ end it."

"As ever, methodology is where we diverge," says Mycroft in a weary tone. "I've offered you what freedom I can, Sherlock. That doesn't include the right to get yourself kidnapped by a serial killer out of boredom."

I almost crack a smile. Now _that _brings back memories. Flashing lights, silver-haired disbelief, and an innocuous, wool-clad figure, among whose talents dissimulation holds no place.

Once, that didn't matter. Now it does. The thought wipes the smile from my face and I get up and pace to the window, feeling Mycroft's eyes on my back.

"This silence isn't like him, Mycroft." My voice is unexpectedly low, my reflection pensive and insubstantial against the glass. Outside a pigeon flutters by and leaves a loose feather behind. I watch it drop, spiraling, to the ground, the sun glinting off the smooth silver-grey like the scale of a fish. A red herring.

Mycroft's voice comes from behind. "You believe he is trying to 'lull us into a false sense of security'?" The tone reveals contempt at the very thought. As well it might.

"No, of course not. He would hardly have revealed himself if that was the case."

"Not even to prevent your demise?" By this point we are both long accustomed to ignoring the irony. I wonder how many victims the East Wind really loses, in the end.

"Nothing would offend him more than my perishing at my leisure," I say at last, turning my back on the window and the heavy lock. Newly installed, I can only suppose to stand between me and the familiar freedom of the pavement beneath. "But that's beside the point. Planes can be hijacked, cabs rerouted, ambushes prepared on nameless foreign streets…even under your supervision. Even after my decimation of his network. If I was all Moriarty wanted, he would have me. No, he tipped his hand at our last meeting, and he's playing the same game as before. It should be familiar to you, Mycroft; Magnussen brought the same challenge before the Iceman."

Mycroft raises an eyebrow at that. "Placing money on the hope you have a heart?"

Long odds indeed, but the gamble has been made before.

"This little pause isn't to let us catch our collective breath, and it isn't for the sake of fooling us either. Quite the opposite, in fact: he's building the tension purposely. He's put money on the table, and now he's raising the…"

"Sherlock?" Mycroft says sharply, and I realize that I have trailed off, my eye catching on something beneath his feet: a recent scratch mark in the wood, formed when I scraped John's chair back into place six months ago. When alone protects me [him] was no longer an option.

Of course. Of _course_.

"If it was just me, I could disappear."

The words drift slowly, disconnected from me, in the way my eyes no longer seem to see what rests before them. Mycroft's voice when it next comes is at my side.

"Yes, that's rather obvious, little brother."

"No, Mycroft," I snap at him. "He's already won round one, don't you see? Bringing us back here. It wasn't just _me _he wanted. I'm no good to him without…"

Three snipers. Three bullets. Three victims.

_No._

A flash of crimson, flaring shock, and an empty shell bleeding out onto a cement rooftop. Another memory, twined into the present moment. Because once again fully fledged realization mingles with the lingering taste of alarm, sparking a rush of something I can't put a name to. Couldn't. Before.

[At some point time abandoned its usual linear pattern and coalesced into a _Before John _and an _After John,_ and in quiet moments both of them flare like bursts of light behind the eyes]

For a long time now the second corpse, the second megalomaniac bleeding out onto the concrete, has obscured my view of the first. But there _was _a first. Not deleted, not forgotten, and now that the question of icy fear overtaking misplaced relief is relevant again I vow to make the long-cherished sight a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But I won't play his game this time. I'll play mine.

"What do you think it means, Mycroft, when a left-handed man offers his right for you to shake?"

Mycroft frowns, puzzling this out as though I've said something cryptic, and finally descends on the obvious.

"You think we're in danger here?"

What an _idiotic…_

"Of course we're in danger," I snarl, resisting the urge to hurl something at him out of sheer annoyance. "We were in danger from the moment the world realized we were more than an overweight government intern and chemistry-obsessed cocaine junkie. No, Mycroft, for a long time the question has been, who else is in danger?"

"What are you asking me to do?"

"Tighten your security. Moriarty will be expecting that, so don't just tighten, _double _it. Screen every agent personally. I want a revolving, protective network surrounding everyone closely connected with me. He may be powerless now, but I won't take that risk. Cameras, checks and balances, find a safe house if need be, just do it."

"Who?"

"John, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson. Mary. Molly, he won't overlook her again. Our parents. And yourself, I suppose."

His mouth twitches at that.

"Mary will be your greatest ally, listen to her. The timing is inconvenient, with the baby due any day, but that can't be helped. I want her armed and dangerous at all times. John too. Give back the gun you confiscated—actually, on second thought, give him a different gun."

Obvious isn't even the word. _Transparent _is more like it. He'll be expecting it, all of it. Doesn't matter.

Amid the murk of plotting, measure and countermeasure, an unconnected memory flits to the surface. Hard to linger on, even now: a day of sunlight, champagne and a dangerous degree of candor.

_I live in hope of the right case._

In spite of the lurking threat and my earlier remonstrance to Mycroft, I have to dip my head to swallow a grin. Jim always did like to watch me dance.

Mycroft is quick to point this out.

"This is all very well, Sherlock, but it doesn't solve anything. Most of the protections you mentioned are already in place, as Moriarty will be well aware. You're gambling on the hope that you're not playing into his hands again. And where do you intend to be while all of this is going on?"

"Until we know more, _everything _is a gamble." I turn away, but not before flashing him my brightest smile. "How do you feel about Russian roulette?"


End file.
